Well I have no aspirations to get to Carnegie Hall, the saying does ring true though and I need the practice.
I posted a couple of threads regarding recent watch repair projects that seem to have gone over well, so here’s one more for you.
I got a new multifunction timegrapher in today. It’s an instrument designed to tell you how a mechanical watch is running by measuring the time between the entry and exit stones on the pallet (the tick and tock), combined with imputing the lift angle of the impulse jewel against the rear of the fork, it does some wizardry and tells you how fast or slow your watch is running, it’s amplitude, beat error, and beat rate. Previously I’ve been using an app on my phone. It’s decent, and does a pretty good job for what it is, but it’s definitely not a replacement for the real thing.
While playing with it tonight, I decided to put on a couple of my watches that I currently own and wear regularly. All but one kept pretty good time, and ironically enough the one that had terrible readings was one I bought brand new about seven months ago directly from the dealer! You would think that this one would probably run better than most, but it was far and away the worst.
Here is its readout before I began to work on it:
It is running fast by 85 seconds per day, a 225° amplitude, which is a rating of the degrees of rotation to the balance wheel (A measure of how efficient the power transfer is from the main spring of the watch through all the wheels into the balance), and a beat error of 3.5m/s. Beat error is the difference in time of the clockwise swing and counterclockwise swing of the balance wheel. A perfect beat error is zero, and means that the impulse jewel on the underside of the balance is engaging the pallet fork at perfect dead center.
It was nerve-racking to say the least, as I haven’t had to adjust beat error on a watch yet, but I got everything regulated. Here’s a couple of photos. I tried to take a photo up close, but it just wouldn’t turn out right. My plans on future equipment will alleviate that. Hopefully one day soon I can post some detailed repair stories that have really intricate photos and even video.
Just FYI, if I even breathe hard on that hair spring it would’ve been game over for me for the night!. I don’t have the magnification capabilities or the skill yet to repair a hair spring by hand.
I got it regulated to three positions, and this thing is keeping miraculously good time now. Aside from the rate and beat error, you’ll notice that the amplitude actually bumped up a little bit now that everything is in line with one another and the power from the main spring is transferring more efficiently throughout the watch. I’ll admit, this one was satisfying!
Don’t mind my ammo stash in the background. Those are recent reloads I need to get put in the safe!
I posted a couple of threads regarding recent watch repair projects that seem to have gone over well, so here’s one more for you.
I got a new multifunction timegrapher in today. It’s an instrument designed to tell you how a mechanical watch is running by measuring the time between the entry and exit stones on the pallet (the tick and tock), combined with imputing the lift angle of the impulse jewel against the rear of the fork, it does some wizardry and tells you how fast or slow your watch is running, it’s amplitude, beat error, and beat rate. Previously I’ve been using an app on my phone. It’s decent, and does a pretty good job for what it is, but it’s definitely not a replacement for the real thing.
While playing with it tonight, I decided to put on a couple of my watches that I currently own and wear regularly. All but one kept pretty good time, and ironically enough the one that had terrible readings was one I bought brand new about seven months ago directly from the dealer! You would think that this one would probably run better than most, but it was far and away the worst.
Here is its readout before I began to work on it:
It is running fast by 85 seconds per day, a 225° amplitude, which is a rating of the degrees of rotation to the balance wheel (A measure of how efficient the power transfer is from the main spring of the watch through all the wheels into the balance), and a beat error of 3.5m/s. Beat error is the difference in time of the clockwise swing and counterclockwise swing of the balance wheel. A perfect beat error is zero, and means that the impulse jewel on the underside of the balance is engaging the pallet fork at perfect dead center.
It was nerve-racking to say the least, as I haven’t had to adjust beat error on a watch yet, but I got everything regulated. Here’s a couple of photos. I tried to take a photo up close, but it just wouldn’t turn out right. My plans on future equipment will alleviate that. Hopefully one day soon I can post some detailed repair stories that have really intricate photos and even video.
Just FYI, if I even breathe hard on that hair spring it would’ve been game over for me for the night!. I don’t have the magnification capabilities or the skill yet to repair a hair spring by hand.
I got it regulated to three positions, and this thing is keeping miraculously good time now. Aside from the rate and beat error, you’ll notice that the amplitude actually bumped up a little bit now that everything is in line with one another and the power from the main spring is transferring more efficiently throughout the watch. I’ll admit, this one was satisfying!
Don’t mind my ammo stash in the background. Those are recent reloads I need to get put in the safe!
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